Musings On Multiple Sclerosis On The Cover Of PEOPLE

P.T. Barnum is oft attributed with the quote, “There is no such thing as bad publicity” (a phrase which has been turned several ways in the past hundred-odd years). It might be a truism, but sometimes it’s hard to read the headlines.

I Won’t Let My Son Die

That’s what the headline of the July 2nd issue of People Magazine reads on its cover. The line is below a photo of recently diagnosed Jack Osbourne and his talk show host mother. Many, MANY in the MS community are outraged at such a quote, but it is important to note that the headline is not in quotation marks.

I have to save any admonition for the editors of the tabloid rag rather than for a concerned mother. (Bad People Magazine. Bad, BAD People Magazine!). Nowhere in the text of the featured article does Sharon Osbourne come across with such alarm. Rather – a cancer survivor herself – Mrs Osbourne is quoted as saying “God gives good to you, and then he kicks you in the ass and you have to pick yourself up and move on”.

That sounds much more like a woman who has faced health issues than the ill attributed headline offers.

The article itself was pretty well written. Only a few things came across as suspect in my reading. Most notably the statement by author Jennifer Garcia that “…tests revealed a [my emphasis] lesion on his brain.” We all know that one lesion does not a diagnosis make.

All of us struggle with the image of our disease. “You look so good” “Oh, your life was just getting going” and the like are daily slings and arrows for people living with MS. People didn’t do any of us any favors in headlining the issue with ill-informed statements of death.

Still, there are many positive aspects to me noted.

Cover attention in a national mag is hardly a bad thing for the cause. Mr Osbourne himself represented the disease far better than most of us could have at that stage in our course (if even now) when he was a guest on mom’s TV program The Talk.

Many in the MS community are calling for Jack Osbourne to be our “Lance Armstrong” or our “Michael J Fox”. I say, let Jack be a father. Let him be a husband. Let Jack Osbourne be a newly diagnosed person who learns about his version of this crazy disease. Let him understand what he can and cannot do. No One should be asked to pick up the weighty banner of our cause just three months after hearing the words, “You have Multiple Sclerosis”.

A public life does not require (from me, at least) public coping.

If and when he is ready to help where he best can, we will welcome Jack as our guy. Until then, I wish the entire Osbourne family well as they learn how to navigate a new landscape they had never anticipated.

I close, for those who reeled at People’s handling of the cover, with a quote more pertinent, in my view, than that which I opened.

“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” Oscar Wilde

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Trevis Gleason

Trevis L. Gleason is a food journalist and published author, an award-winning chef and culinary instructor who has taught at institutions such as Cornell University, New England Culinary Institute and...read more